Note: this article was originally published on LinkedIn. Read or follow my latest posts on LinkedIn.
Often I get asked, “Can you recommend a good recruitment system for our organisation“, without giving any additional information. That’s like asking do you know a good car/ book/ restaurant/ movie for me, but you don’t know the person very well. So this question is impossible to answer if you don’t know whom it’s for, what the current situation is, why they have a problem, how they want to solve it, and when and where they want it.
Having said that, more and more I’m implementing free applicant tracking systems (ATS) at my clients, who don’t use an ATS at this moment, or are in the process of buying one. It’s a great way of getting started and its get them used to automating the recruiting process with a lot of quick wins.
But if all options are open, I do favour solutions that can be customised or configured in many different ways. Of course the first question my client will ask is: “why should we pay for an ATS when there are so many free(mium) solutions available?”.
It makes sense to raise this question so let me share you my response by comparing a free ATS Qandidate.com with a premium solution, Lumesse Talentlink. The latter which is listed as one of the leading suppliers in the Gartner Magic Quadrant Talent Management Suites.
Free versus Premium ATS
Here are the most important differences between these 2 ATS solutions:
| Qandidate.com (Free) | Lumesse Talentlink (Premium) |
| Target market: Designed for Small and Midsize companies | Target market: Primary suitable for large international corporate enterprises |
| Implementation: Plug and play – Self service setup | Implementation: Full supported paid implementation project |
| Configurability: Standard solution (5% configurable) | Configurability: 95% configurable |
| Functional scope: Sourcing, screening, interviewing, selection | Functional scope: Approval management, sourcing, screening, interviewing, selection, onboarding, learning |
| Languages: English, Dutch with more to come later this year | Languages: 30+ languages |
| Login facility: Username/password on login page, social profile login capabilities in development | Login facility: Username/password on login page / Single-Sign-On |
| Career site: Plug and play career site or API integration. For internal/External recruitment | Career site: iframe corporate career site integration, API integration. For multiple career sites |
| Reporting: Standard reports and status overview | Reporting: Custom reports, status overviews and analytics |
| Import/Export: Manual upload candidate data, data export as additional service | Import & export: Import and export of data |
| HRIS integration: No integrations available | HRIS integration: Bespoke integrations can be setup |
| Data privacy: Compliant with Data Privacy legislation | Data privacy: Compliant with Data Privacy legislation |
| Data Protection: Data securely hosted at Rackspace in the UK | Data Protection: Data securely hosted at TelecityGroup in Frankfurt (Germany) |
| Search: Elastic search / free field search, full CV search in development | Search: Custom and smart searches |
| Licence: No subscription | Licence: Subscription fee (approx 1 EUR per month per user) |
| Support: Available for all users: 12/5 European business hours via community, mail, telephone and in-system chat | Support: Available for Key-user 12/5 business hours via community, mail, telephone. Extension to premium package 24/7 possible. |
| Time to implement: 1 day | Time to implement: 12+ weeks |
Note: this list is by far complete as both solutions, especially Lumesse, offers a lot more functionalities. But the basic requirements to support and improve a recruiting process are covered here.
There is a (nearly) perfect ATS for every company
At this moment Qandidate.com is running within a small (110 people) government organisation and fits their needs perfect, with no intention to change this. Lumesse Talentlink is favoured by a large international (5000 people) technical organisation with the ambition for a state-of-the-art recruiting process. They are also using Qandidate.com at this moment as a temporary solution to avoid Outlook Recruiting.
Are you using a free or premium ATS? If so, why did you choose for this solution? Let’s share your thoughts and ideas!
Image: Qandidate.com
Comments Closed